My name is Zoë Colvin and this blog is about pictures and places and books and unusual museums and everything from Z to C (that is, absolutely everything in existence, provided one takes an anarchic view of alphabetical order) Above all, it's an aide memoire for me

Sunday, 27 March 2016

An Act of Vast Inattention

After bemoaning the ugliness of most things erected after about 1940, I took refuge in one of Michael Innes's agreeable Inspector Appleby novels. This one is called The Secret Vanguard and in it Innes shows Appleby reflecting as critically as me on the progress of architecture.

As the novel was published in 1940, I may need to push back my date for acceptability of buildings - or review my whole belief and accept that buildings I find hideous will eventually, like each season's fashions, grow on me. Perhaps all that I - and Mr Innes/Inspector Appleby before me - am/are suffering from is shock of the new.

On the other hand, judging by how rapidly modern buildings deteriorate, are torn down and replaced by equally unloveable, usually even taller ones, perhaps I'll never have the chance to get beyond the shock phase.

Here is the passage that struck me. In it, Appleby takes a taxi from Trafalgar Square to a library somewhere in Bloomsbury:"In five minutes the taxi, much as if it had been a contraption in a scientific romance, deposited him at the threshold of the eighteenth century. Strange how these severe facades satisfied the mind. Or rather not strange; nothing subtle or inspired was involved - nothing more, probably, than observance of the law of golden section. Strange rather that, as if by some act of vast inattention, people had just ceased to build that way."

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Holding On - a novel

I wrote a novel that the London literary agency Sheil Land tried to sell for me. One publisher thought it was "compelling". Another said, "It’s pacy and gripping, and the plot is great." A third commented that it "is a warm, engaging and easy read", while a fourth considered that, "It is a good story (stories) well told". If you want to see what you think, you can find it here.

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About Me

I wrote a novel, represented by Sheil Land. One publisher thought it was "compelling, but it wouldn’t be easy to categorize – it is somewhere between ‘literary’ and ‘commercial’, and would need to be one or the other to be pitched for successfully in an acquisition meeting." Another said, 'It’s pacy and gripping, and the plot is great, but it lacks that lighter women’s fiction feeling. The writing is undeniably good but I’m not quite sure how I would position it on our list.'A third commented that it "is a warm, engaging and easy read but this ‘middle market fiction’ is a really tough area', while a fourth considered that, "It is a good story (stories) well told, but just missing the X-factor that would make me fall in love with it." I wanted to write an entertaining novel that I would like when I was in the mood for something thoughtful & amusing that I could enjoy without too much effort. If you would like to read it yourself, you can find it at http://cargocollective.com/Unrealities/Holding-On-a-novel.